Biography

Dore Gold is at the forefront of the defense of Israel's rights before the world community. He was born in 1953 in Hartford, Connecticut. He was educated at Mt. Hermon School, in Northfield Massachusetts and then completed his B.A. degree at Columbia College in Oriental Studies-Islam (1975). Gold then went on to obtain an MA (1976) and PhD (1984) from Columbia University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. In 1978 he was awarded the Certificate of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University's School of International Affairs. Gold became an Israeli citizen in 1980 and served in the Israel Defense Forces.

In 1991, Gold served an adviser to the Israeli delegation at the Madrid Peace Conference. From June 1996 to June 1997, he was the Foreign Policy Adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During the period in which Benjamin Netanyahu served as the head of the Israeli opposition, Gold was instrumental in forging the relationship between the Likud Party leadership and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in response to the strategic ties that were growing between Israel's Labor government and the PLO under Yasser Arafat. Gold accompanied Netanyahu to meetings with the Jordanian leadership in 1994 and 1995 in London, Amman, and in Aqaba. As the Foreign Policy Adviser under Netanyahu after the 1996 elections, Gold acted as a special envoy to the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Jordan and others in the Arab world. He was also involved in negotiations leading up to the Hebron Agreement and the Note for the Record.

During this same period, he was involved in some of Israel's most pivotal diplomatic initiatives. According to Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin, in their joint biography of Yasser Arafat, Gold was one of the first envoys of the newly-elected Likud government to meet with Yasser Arafat in the Gaza Strip on June 27, 1996. In The Missing Peace, Dennis Ross relates to the "Abu-Mazen-Dore Gold" talks that ensued afterwords as a result of which the Palestinians closed down offices in East Jerusalem that Israel had argued were a violation of the Oslo Accords. This was the price that Arafat had to pay for his first meeting with Netanyahu. It was a hard concession for the Palestinians, according to Ross, for it was viewed by them as a "symbolic retreat on East Jerusalem."

On the Syrian negotiating track, former Israeli ambassador to the US, Itamar Rabinovich, describes how he concluded with Gold an understanding over the Monitoring Group for Southern Lebanon, which was followed by a direct discussion between Gold and the Syrian ambassador to the US, Walid Muallam. According to the French journalist, Charles Enderline , Gold secured a commitment from Secretary of State Warren Christopher that the Rabin "deposit" on the future of the Golan Heights did not bind the State of Israel. This effort also included obtaining a new US commitment from the Clinton administration to the September 1975 Ford letter, in which it was stated that the US would give great weight to Israel remaining on the Golan Heights. According to the Israeli Hebrew daily, Maariv, Christopher wrote this re-newed commitment in a formal letter of assurances to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on September 19, 1996.In early 1997, Netanyahu asked Gold to join him to present Israel's requirements for defensible borders in the Golan Heights and in the West Bank to President Bill Clinton in the map room of the White House.

From mid- 1997 to late 1999, Gold represented Israel as its ambassador to the United Nations. Upon his departure from his position at the UN, New York Times op-ed writer and former editor, A.M. Rosenthal, noted on October 8, 1999: "Dore Gold, leaving soon after a tour of duty as one of the best U.N. representatives Israel ever had, points out that membership in regional groups is a requirement for nomination to the Security Council."

In 1998, Gold served as a member of the Israeli delegation at the Wye River negotiations between Israel, the PLO, and then U.S. President Bill Clinton at the Wye River Plantation in Maryland.

Since 2000, Gold has served as president of the non-profit institute, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, but remained at the forefront of the struggle for Israel's rights. From 2001 to 2003, Gold served as an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, most notably at the Aqaba Summit with President George W. Bush. During this period, Gold regularly appeared on US network television programs on behalf of the Sharon government, including Meet the Press, The Today Show, CNN's Late Edition, as well as on Fox and Friends. In July 2003, after he published the New York Times bestseller, Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism, Gold testified as an expert before the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs on Saudi Arabia's alleged role in providing ideological and financial support for international terrorism.

Since 2006, Gold led an international effort by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs to advocate that UN member states take legal measures against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran on grounds that he violated the anti-incitement clauses of the 1948 Genocide Convention, with his repeated statements about "wiping Israel off the map." Gold led a delegation to a conference held jointly with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations at the New York County Bar Association on December 14, 2006. Speakers included former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, Prof. Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School, and the US ambassador to the UN John Bolton. Senator Hillary Clinton sent a letter of support to the conference.

Gold led an Israeli delegation to a second conference at the British House of Commons on January 25, 2007 which was chaired by Lord David Trimble and supported by members of both the British Labor Party and the Conservative Party. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined the Israeli team. As a result of this effort, over 60 members of the House of Commons called for the indictment of Ahmadinejad. A third event organized by Gold and the International Association of Genocide Scholars was held on September 23, 2008 in Washington D.C. Speaking at the third conference was Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, former US ambassador to the UN, as well as Salih Mahmoud Osman, a member of the Sudanese Parliament and advocate for human rights in Darfur.

Since the release of NY Times bestseller Hatred's Kingdom, Gold published a number of bestselling books on international affairs and the Middle East. His stinging critique of the UN, Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos, was praised by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Jeane Kirkpatrick. He then wrote NY Times bestseller The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City and The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West.

Finally, Gold was invited by Brandeis University to respond in a public event to Justice Richard Goldstone, who led the UN Gaza Commission that charged Israel with war crimes in its handling of Operation Cast Lead in late 2008 and early 2009. The debate between Goldstone and Gold was held on November 5, 2009. It was the first time an Israeli confronted Goldstone directly with material that completely contradicted the charges he made against the State of Israel and undermined his main arguments. To date, Ambassador Gold is the only person to have personally confronted Justice Goldstone on the substance of his report.